Ansem's Children
by In the empty seat
Summary: Imagine a world where your fourteenth birthday is your last. Where only one thing can save you. And where even your protector can't even be trusted. Welcome to the new era, ladies anf gents. Slash. Multiple pairings.
1. Video ArchiveRiku

**Author's Notes:**

**Hey, it's me. Yes, I actually write. Holy crap.**

**So, yeah. Nothing fancy today, ladies and gents. Just some idea I got from reading The Supernaturalist. Awsome book! So, future on the brain. Yahoo!**

**Yeaaah. Well, first things first, you are not going to understand anything for a while. But all will be explained as it progresses, so don't panic young grasshoppers, time shall tell all. Other than that, this story will contain....YAOI! (boy on boy) Hmm, good stuff. 'Nuff said.**

**Disclaimer: Aw, you know how it goes.**

**VIDEO ARCHIVE—**

**INTERVIEW 1759 o RIKU**

A razor blade gave me freedom from the Dorms. A small rectangle of steel, incredibly sharp on two sides. It came wrapped in paper, with words NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN printed on the side.

I was eleven years old then. Eight years ago, which means I am probably the oldest human alive. Five years past the time when the Overlords would have wrenched my brain out of my skull and used it in one of their creatures.

Actually, I guess Ansem is the oldest human around. If you can call him human.

Ansem would say that it wasn't the razor blade that gave me freedom. It was what I did with it. The object is irrelevant; my action is the important part.

But that blade still seems important to me. It was the first useful object I ever conjured—or created, or whatever it is I do. I remember when I first realized what a razor blade was, staring at that faded page of newspaper I found. The newspaper that had lain in a wall cavity for forty, maybe fifty years, long before the Overlords decided to use the building as Dormitory.

And there, in black-turned-gray on white-turned-yellow, an advertisement for razor blades with a picture perfect for me to put in my head.

It took three months of practice for me to build that picture into something real, a hard, sharp object to hold in my hand. Then one day, it wasn't just a thought. It was there in my hand. Real. Sharp.

Sharp enough to cut the tracer out of my wrist. To make escape a possibility…

Well, I did it. Only one in ten thousand gets out of the Dormitories, according to Ansem. Most can't find anything to cut the tracer out or don't have the wits to disable it in some other way.

Even now, when I look at the scar, I wonder how…But it's done now. I've been free for eight years…

I don't know why Ansem wants to record this. I mean, who's going to see this video.

I've been here with Ansem for three years. But he's been here for nearly fifteen—ever since the Change. There's been a lot of children in this place since then.

I've seen their videos but I'llnever see them. You sit in the dark, wayching their aces as they talk through their brief lives, and all the time you wonder what got them in the end. Was it a Winger striking out of the sky? Trackers on their heels till they dropped and the Myrmidons came? A Ferret uncoiling in some dark hole where they'd hoped to hide?

Now you're watching me…and wondering…what got him?


	2. Chapter One

**Author's Notes:**

**It's still gonna be confusing for now.**

**Disclaimer: ...what do you think?...**

**Chapter One**

Sora crouched in the corner under two birdshit-caked blankets, watching the fog streaming though the windows. Sixteen gray waterfalls of wet air cascading in slow motion. One for each of the windows in the railway carriage.

But the fog had only a small part of his attention, something his eyes looked at while he strained his ears to work out what was happening outside. The carriage was his third hideout that day, and the Trackers had been all too quick to find the other two.

They were out there now, whistling in the mist; whistling the high-pitched, repetitive notes that meant they'd lost their prey. Temporarily…

Sora shivered and ran his finger along the sharpened steel spike resting across his drawn-up knees. Cold steel was the only thing that could kill the Overlords' creatures—some of the weaker ones, anyway, like Trackers. Not Myrmidons…

As if on cue, a deeper, booming noise cut through the Trackers' whistle. Myrmidons battle sound. Either the force behind the Trackers was massing to sweep the area, or they encountered the forces of a rival Overlord.

No, that was too much to ask for—and the whistles were changing too, showing that the Trackers had found a trail…His trail…

With that thought, Sora's Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasant close future, the soon-to-be-now.

Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Sora's own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiraled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to pile the blankets.

Sora didn't want to see more. He came out of his vision and took the escape route he'd planned months before, when he'd first found the carriage. Lifting the trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

Back in the carriage, the doors shrieked as they were forced open, and Sora both heard and felt the drumbeat as the Myrmidons hobnails on the steel floor above his head.

Ignoring the new grazes on his well-scabbed knees, he began to crawl across the concrete ties, keeping well under the train. The Trackers would wait for the Myrmidons now, and the Myrmidons were often slow to grasp what happened. He probably had three or four minute to make his escape.

The train was a long one, slowly rusting in it's place between Central and Redtree stations. Like all the others, it was completely intact, if a little timeworm. It had just stopped where it was, all those years ago.

Not that Sora knew it as a form of transport. It was just part of the fixed landscape to him, one of the many hiding places he moved among. Sora didn't have memories of a different time, except the hazy recollection of life in the Dorms—and his escape with two other children. Both of them long since taken…

At the end of the train, he got down on his belly under the locomotive, steel spike clutched in his fist, white knuckles showing through the ingrained dirt.

_Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep…_

The Trackers were on the move again, spreading out to search. It sounded like a trio on each side of the train, coming toward him.

Sora pictures them in his head, trying to get his Change Vision to show them exactly where they were.

But Change Vision came and went when it choose, and couldn't be controlled. This time it didn't show him anything—but a memory arose unbidden, a super-fast slide show of Trackers flashing through his mind.

This, spindly stick-humans that looked like half-melted plastic soldiers. Bright, bulbous eyes, too large for their almost-human sockets. Long pointed noses that were almost all red-flared nostrils…

They could smell a human out of those noses, Sora knew. No matter where he hid.

That was the foremost as Sora listened again. But he couldn't work out where the Trackers were, so he edged forward till he was almost out from under the train and could get his knees and feet up like a sprinter on the starting block. It was bout thirty yards to the embankment well. If he could cross the open space and get up it, the Trackers would go past to look for an easier way up—and Myrmidons were slow climbers.

At this time for day that left only Wingers to worry about, and they would be roosting in the City Tower, avoiding the fog.

Then the Trackers whistled again, giving their found signal—and Myrmidons boomed in answer, frighteningly close.

With that boom, Sora shot out like a rabbit, jinking and zigzagging over the railway lines, frantic with a terrible realization.

The Myrmidons had crept through the train!

He could hear their boots crashing onto the gravel around the tracks as the huge creatures jumped down from the lead carriage, the bass shouts of their battle cries joining the frenzied whistles of the Trackers.

Heart pounding, face white with sudden exertion, Sora hit the embankment at speed reaching head height before he even needed to take his first hold. Then, as his feet scrabbled to take him higher, he reached out…and slipped.

The fog had laid a film of moisture on the old stones of the embankment, and in his panic Sora had run to one of the hardest spots to climb. His fingers couldn't find any cracks between the stones…

Slipping, his feet touched bottom, and he added his own wail of despair to the awful noise of the creatures behind him.

Soon the Myrmidons would surround him, silver nets shooting out to catch him in their sticky tracery. Then a Winger would come to take him away. Back to the Dorms. Or if he was old enough…straight to the Meat Factory.

As Sora thought of that, bile filled his mouth. Then he turned to face the Myrmidons and hefted his steel spike.

"Kill me!" he screamed at the tall shapes approaching through the fog. "Kill me!"

The Myrmidons stopped ten yards away. Seven of them—a full maniple. Seven-foot-tall, barrel-chested monsters with long arms ending in spade-shaped hands. Six-fingered hands, with thick, oversized thumbs.

The Myrmidons wore gold-and-green metal-cloth armor that had spikes and flanges, heavily decorated with battle charms and medals, sparkling even though the fog. Crested helmets enclosed their heads, and black glass visors his their faces.

If they had faces. They certainly had mouths, but they were silent, now that their target was trapped. The Trackers were quiet too, clustering in their trios behind the line of Myrmidons. Their work was done.

I'll make them kill me, Sora though desperately as the Myrmidons—toying with him now—raised their net guns. He tensed himself, ready to lunge, hoping to strike one behind the knee to irritate it enough that it would kill unthinking…

"Hey, you! Shut your eyes and duck!"

It was so long since Sora had heard a human voice that he almost didn't understand, till a fizzing, sparking object sailed past his head and bounced toward the Myrmidons.

He ducked, curling himself into the embankment, face pressed against the wet stone. For a second nothing happened save the massed growl of the Myrmidons' surprise.

Then there was a brilliant flash, smacking his eyes with a red even though closed eyelids, and his bare neck with sudden heat.

At the same time something hit his back, and he flinched.

"Grab the rope!" called the voice again. "Hurry up! The flash will only hold them for a few seconds."

A rope! Sora uncurled and saw the knotted end hanging above him. His eye followed the rope up the embankment, up to the fog-wreathed figures on the road above the railway.

Humans. Three of them. All older and larger than he.

For a moment he hesitated, glancing back at the blinding groping Myrmidons. Then he started to climb.

**PLEASE REVIEW!!!!**

**And no, not "that" kind of groping.**


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